Peter Goers: Women are still fighting for their rights over their own bodies
Women have had to fight for their rights for decades – now men in the US want to re-exert control over women’s bodies, writes Peter Goers.
Opinion
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Well into the 21st century, some men still want to control all women. Some men still want to tell women what they can do with their bodies. Some men want to legislate that women must carry and give birth to unwanted children. This is obscene. This is so wrong.
Roe v Wade in the US Supreme Court in 1973 gave women the constitutional right to abortion. It’s appallingly likely that this crucial decision will be overturned by men in the name of politics and religion. It will cause millions of unwanted children to be born. It will kill women. Victims of rape and incest will be forced to give birth to children conceived in impossible torment. Babies with shocking deformities will be forcibly born into a world in which they can only suffer.
This is all to preserve the sanctity of life. How sanctified is the life of an unwanted child?
Only a woman can conceive, carry and give birth to a child. It is a woman’s choice to have or not have that child. Women thought this hard fought for right to abortion was solved a half century ago but the fight for women’s rights never ends.
Overturning Roe v Wade will kill women. Decriminalising abortion does not stop abortion as we’ve seen for centuries. It just makes abortion more dangerous and expensive. Women will again perish in great numbers having botched, illegal backyard abortions and die attempting to abort themselves with wire coat hangers. It’s mainly men who want to make abortion illegal and who don’t care about this. They don’t care about the sanctity of a woman’s body and a woman’s choice.
The loud male opponents of abortion – the so-called pro-lifers – distrust all government and want less government in their lives but they want governments to legislate against abortion. They want governments to interfere with women’s bodies.
The right-wing opponents of abortion are pro-life and, ironically, for the death penalty. They are pro-life but love guns which kill people. They oppose universal health care which saves lives.
The anti-abortion movement just desires to control and punish women. Nearly 85 per cent of all abortions occur in the first trimester when they are aborting a collection of cells without sentience. The anti-abortion movement is entirely political. The Republican Party was once avidly pro-choice. Governor Ronald Reagan legalised abortion in California. He and every other Republican president have been bribed by the powerful, noisy religious right-wing when it adopted this cause only after it had to abandon the support for segregated education in the 1980s.
Despite the constitutional sanctity of Roe v Wade, many American states have made it very difficult and expensive for women to have an abortion. In some states women are forced to see an ultrasound of their foetus before they abort it. Doctors have been murdered by pro-lifers. Women are violently harassed outside abortion clinics. Anti-abortionists even lied by inventing a bogus link between abortion and breast cancer.
South Australia has been slow to fully decriminalise abortion and make it easier to achieve, especially for rural women. This legislation is now 15 months old yet still not implemented. Why?
Abortion is health care. A woman’s life can be ruined by an unwanted child. So can a man’s life. Any society must want children who are wanted, needed and loved.
The decision to abort a child is difficult. Women need support not hatred, suspicion and punishment. Some men want women to give birth against their will. Why is a woman less important than a man? Why are woman still oppressed?
Trump even said that women who had abortions should be punished. Should they be forced to wear, once again, a scarlet A.
Yes, every child is precious and even divine but only if they are wanted by the women who bear them.
Peter Goers can be heard weeknights and Sundays on ABC Radio Adelaide
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